wireless communications

Some channels in Wi-Fi routers are indeed much faster — but that doesn’t mean you should go ahead and change them. Read on to find out more about interference and the massive difference between 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi.

Two and a half days ago, at around 6:15am local time on December 28, AirAsia flight 8501 (QZ8501) disappeared en route from Indonesia to Singapore. There were 162 passengers and crew on-board, and no survivors have yet been found at the plane’s crash site in the Java Sea. Why, in 2014, can we still lose vehicles that are responsible shuttling millions of passengers across the skies every day? Why don’t we have real-time tracking of aircraft?

The debate over net neutrality got a touch more heated this week as IBM, Intel, and Qualcomm collectively asked the government not to invoke Title II — i.e the common carrier provision — in an attempt to enforce net neutrality. In a joint letter to Congress and the FCC itself, the companies collectively argue that proposed regulation under Title II would damage corporate competitiveness, network upgrades, and the overall customer experience. Unfortunately, they’re wrong.

Have you ever wanted to know what it’s like for scientists and support staff living at the South Pole? How do they communicate with the rest of the world? Can they Skype with their families? I wanted to know the answers to those questions, and thankfully I just happen to know someone currently living and working in Antarctica.

A new radio design from the University of Texas may have found a way to transmit and receive data simultaneously, without the need for specialized software networks. Could this new technology transform cellular broadband and WiFi data speeds?

Proving yet again that the US government can show a surprising soupçon of tenacity when it comes to invading privacy and occasionally catching a terrorist, a new report claims that the US Marshals Service — since 2007 — has been criss-crossing the country with small airplanes equipped with fake cell towers. These small aircraft (fixed-wing Cessnas) intercept communications between your mobile phone and the carrier’s legitimate cell tower, allowing the US Marshals to find and triangulate the exact location of a target. Obviously, the primary target of the system is criminals — but the report says a lot of “innocent Americans” are also being tagged by the program.

Elon Musk, capitalizing on SpaceX’s unique ability to cheaply launch stuff into space, has announced that he’s working on deploying a constellation of some 700 satellites, for the purpose of bringing “very low cost” internet access to everyone on Earth. Satellite internet access could be very useful in rural parts of North America and Europe, but it’s the under-connected parts of the world (Asia, Africa, South America) that will be of more interest to Musk, both financially and ideologically.